Theodor Fliedner

Georg Heinrich Theodor Fliedner ( born January 21, 1800 Eppstein, † October 4, 1864 in Kaiserwerth ) was a German Lutheran pastor and founder of the Kaiser Diakonieverband. He is, together with his wives Friederike Münster and Caroline Bertheau, an innovator of the apostolic deaconess ministry.

Life

Childhood and youth

Fliedner was born in 1800 as one of the ten children of the pastor Jakob Ludwig Fliedner and his wife Henriette. He was also taught to school together with his siblings from their parents and expressed early in the desire to also be a pastor. The father died when Fliedner was thirteen years old, mother and friends of the family allowed him to take another visit to the school. 1817 visited Fliedner and his brother the University of Giessen to study on a scholarship evangelical theology. He later moved to Göttingen and completed his studies in 1820 at the Theological Seminary at Herborn.

Life's work and professional commitment

In 1822 Fliedner pastor in Kaiserwerth in Dusseldorf. His living in a minority of Catholic parishioners surrounding areas were hard hit by unemployment and poverty, and Fliedner tried his poor community to gain a church, school and the poor fund. First, he sought in the more affluent neighboring communities support, later he traveled several times to the centers of revival movement in the Netherlands and to England to collect donations. There he met Elizabeth Fry, who became involved in the British welfare of prisoners and their work impressed him very much.

1826 Fliedner founded the " Rheinisch- Westfälische prison society" and was committed to reforms to improve the living conditions of detainees and for rehabilitation programs. Under his leadership, a ecumenical prison ministry was born. From donations he founded in September 1833 an asylum for discharged female prisoners, whose Head he appointed Friederike Münster, whom he had married in 1828 in Oberbiel ( today part of Solms near Wetzlar ) and a significant supporting role in the expansion and extension his projects played. Together with her Fliedner had eleven children, eight of whom died in infancy.

To improve the poor educational conditions of children and adolescents and to simultaneously prevent any delinquency, Fliedner set up a knitting school, in 1836 a school for small children and a toddler teacher training college. The disastrous conditions in hospitals where mostly guards and no nurses worked and the sick were largely left to themselves, led Fliedner, to establish a " training institute for Protestant nurses " on 13 October 1836, of an improvement of nursing states patients should ensure and be the first Protestant deaconess supervised the later addition of the hospital.

Model of the diaconal work of the " community nurses " was the Phoebe from Romans ( 16.1 LUT) for Fliedner. He understood deaconesses as Servants of Jesus, as servants of the sick and as servants to one another. To protect the deaconesses from attacks and to emphasize their professionalism, Fliedner gave them a respectable uniform and put on guidelines that should restructure and regulate the daily routine of deaconesses. 1838, the first deaconesses were seconded to other regions, there were new deaconess houses in Reydt, Frankfurt and Kirchheim. Until her death in 1842 Friederike Fliedner led the deaconess and the Mother House in Kaiserwerth.

The living conditions of women and also the incentives for young women to work independently in the context of charity were a major concern Fliedner. Under his aegis that in 1841 a seminar for teachers and in 1842 an orphanage for girls pin from the middle classes.

Fliedner married in 1843 Caroline Bertheau, which also was very active in her husband's side. In 1844 the Pastoralgehülfen and deacon institution from which emerged today Theodor Fliedner Foundation. In 1849 Fliedner quit his position as parish priest, in order to dedicate his work to a greater degree and in particular to collect the necessary funds for his life's work. In 1846 he accompanied the first deaconesses to a hospital in England. In 1849 he visited North America, with four seconded sisters in Pittsburgh Hospital (now the Passavant Hospital ) should work on a petition of the Lutheran clergyman William Alfred Passavant out. In 1851 he was able to accompany in Israel, where he opened a boarding school for girls Talitha Kumi sisters to Jerusalem. In 1852 he founded in Kaiserwerth a sanatorium for sick female mind.

Three years before his death celebrated Fliedner, weakened health of a trip to Egypt, with the Sisters of the 25th anniversary of the Deaconess work. At this time it consisted of 83 stations abroad and 26 independent houses.

Theodor Fliedner died on 4 October 1864 in Kaiserwerth. His son from his first marriage, George Fliedner (1840-1916), wrote a biography of his father. One of the sons from his second marriage, Fritz Fliedner (1845-1901), worked as a theologian in Madrid.

Art and literature Fliedner

  • Collection journey to Holland and England, 2 volumes; 1831
  • Brief history of the emergence of the first Protestant institutions in love Kaiserwerth; 1856
  • Songbook infant schools; 1842
  • Kaiserwerther folk calendar; 1842
  • Poor and sick friend; 1849
  • Book of Martyrs and other witnesses to the faith of the Protestant Church, 4 volumes; 1850 ff
  • School - illustrated Bible, Old and New Testament in 30 frames. Edited by Theodor Fliedner; Dusseldorf: . Arnz, 1843 Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf

Anniversaries

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